Overview of Parent and Child Interactions in Analytics

With the support for cross-channel interactions, there is the prospect of an initiated interaction crossing channels and agents. Additionally, the ability to associate multiple business objects is also introduced as part of this functionality.

When a communication is initiated with a customer, an interaction is created that contains the channel, contact, resource, and multiple other attributes. Each interaction can have only one reference to each of these attributes. In the case of business objects, an interaction can be associated with one of each type of business object. In the case where a communication adds additional attributes, the application automatically generates a child interaction, and associates it to the original parent.

Here's a few examples of such cases:

• A communication crosses channels (the child interaction would store the new channel).

• A communication is transferred between agents (the child interaction would store the second agent).

• More than one type of business object is associated. For example, an interaction can be associated with one service request. However, if during the conversation, a second service request is created or updated, the second interaction would have to be stored in a child interaction.

For metric calculations in BI, it's often necessary to count the entire set of these atomic interactions, as a single interaction. This single interaction is referred to as the parent interaction. The atomic interactions are referred to as child interactions. The parent interaction count isn't the summation of child interaction count. In any cross-channel or cross-agent interaction, there's always a single parent interaction, and more than one child interactions.